What was I before? I cannot remember ever feeling. My face covered in scars and marks, red bumps bold and long, white bumps, small and congregated. In high school, these things meant everything.
The face is a mask. Even the real face, the beautiful oval of a young girl, perhaps a long eyelashed boy, a wrinkled man old from years of hiding, that is what we are given when we are born and it is woven into who we are, a costume so real we cannot tear it off though our bloody fingers try. A long arch of my hand, my nails, tracing around my own oval tells me yes, I am still playing the part that I was cast as the day my fine blond hair, my chubby child’s face, since changed as the role morphed and matured and the character grew, my little finger nails and hazel eyes fell soft on my mothers shoulder, gave way to my mothers lips, fat soft and flexible, warm from the blood under my cheeks, grasped onto my mothers finger, a reflex of round desire to anchor, and glanced into the world, lightness coming into being as I did, the images around me new to my newness, an entire new world, a set, made for my character, the only girl my limited acting career would ever allow me to play.
God castes roles cruely.
and he directs, like a conductor, his fingers telling us to move move do that again on and on and on you must walk i don’t care how tired you replaying the sound track as it tells us to move along this strings as we resist tugging no i want to go to school i don’t want to take the semester off why are you doing this to me why are you doing this I am okay and you ruin me you ruin me Maggie Balch you ruin me Victor Frankel you ruin me and you Boris and you Ari and you Sam and Mike and Victor and now Nick and Melanie Braverman and God I’m working with you I’m pulling your strings in defiance I swing along my tracks, the puppet that my own hands work work the direction I walk and the way my arms move my fingers grab the direction of God if I miss up he will kill me and he is already killing me because I am fighting I am fighting I am fighting
and breathe.
I recall the things, embarrassing, disheartening, repulsive, my face the center of it all.
When God wrote the play, and told me to act, he stamped my face on the program.
Acne and all.
The face is a mask. Even the real face, the beautiful oval of a young girl, perhaps a long eyelashed boy, a wrinkled man old from years of hiding, that is what we are given when we are born and it is woven into who we are, a costume so real we cannot tear it off though our bloody fingers try. A long arch of my hand, my nails, tracing around my own oval tells me yes, I am still playing the part that I was cast as the day my fine blond hair, my chubby child’s face, since changed as the role morphed and matured and the character grew, my little finger nails and hazel eyes fell soft on my mothers shoulder, gave way to my mothers lips, fat soft and flexible, warm from the blood under my cheeks, grasped onto my mothers finger, a reflex of round desire to anchor, and glanced into the world, lightness coming into being as I did, the images around me new to my newness, an entire new world, a set, made for my character, the only girl my limited acting career would ever allow me to play.
God castes roles cruely.
and he directs, like a conductor, his fingers telling us to move move do that again on and on and on you must walk i don’t care how tired you replaying the sound track as it tells us to move along this strings as we resist tugging no i want to go to school i don’t want to take the semester off why are you doing this to me why are you doing this I am okay and you ruin me you ruin me Maggie Balch you ruin me Victor Frankel you ruin me and you Boris and you Ari and you Sam and Mike and Victor and now Nick and Melanie Braverman and God I’m working with you I’m pulling your strings in defiance I swing along my tracks, the puppet that my own hands work work the direction I walk and the way my arms move my fingers grab the direction of God if I miss up he will kill me and he is already killing me because I am fighting I am fighting I am fighting
and breathe.
I recall the things, embarrassing, disheartening, repulsive, my face the center of it all.
When God wrote the play, and told me to act, he stamped my face on the program.
Acne and all.
